Today I’m driving to my parents’ house to drop off some cloth face masks I made for them, plus the bedspreads my mom gave me to wash almost a month ago. I am sure she planned on having them back before now, but she handed them off to me the day before the world more or less went to shit. This happened to be my dad’s 79th birthday, and of course, much of the world was already well on its way to shit, but it is my personal line of demarcation between Before and After.
Last night it was properly warm in the evening and to honor this we had hot dogs for dinner. I roasted (???) them on a pan in the oven because our grill, like the world, has gone to shit. I checked it out yesterday with hope in my heart but while it looks fine from the outside, the inside is a filigree of rust, held together by what appears to be vines growing through it. Whoops!
We made it work last year, but now it just seems like a gas explosion waiting to happen. If I can psych myself up for a trip to Home Depot maybe we can make do with a Weber charcoal grill for a while. Shopping for, buying, and installing a new gas grill is way not on my list of priorities right now.
Yesterday I was pressing and cutting materials for face masks and my husband asked me how many I was going to make. “As many as I can for whoever needs them,” I responded. Much like making a cake, there is a lot about mask-making that is incredibly good for distraction: pressing, cutting, pinning, sewing. It all gets to be very rote and mindless, providing you can set aside the fact you’re making face masks because of a pandemic.
I’ve started watching The Valhalla Murders on Netflix and it’s not very good. I mean, it is exactly the kind of show that I like – a dark, Nordic police procedural drama with a strong female lead, gimme that good shit – but the dialogue is dubbed and it makes me crazy to try and give it my full attention. Fortunately, I am virtually incapable of giving anything my full attention right now (remember concentrating? LOL) and thus The Valhalla Murders are the perfect background noise. I can maybe tell you about half the plot. It’s Iceland, there are some murders…uh, troubled cops…a storyline with a kid? It’s the perfect thing to have murmuring in the background since the entire show is murmured, albeit in stilted American voices that don’t match up with the Icelandic-speaking actors’ mouths.
People are going to come out of this experience extremely more weird than when they went into it. I’m a shining example of this and you’re subscribed with a front-row seat!